Legal phrase meaning

pinkypinky

In an Irish administration of 1919, someone is described as leaving a widow, 6 lawful children and 1 other more remote lawful issue, no parents or grandparents.

What you understand to mean by one other more remote lawful issue?

At first I thought, extra-marital child, but does it mean grandchild?

Alicat

Yeah, I wouldn't have thought that an extra-marital child would have been described as 'lawful'? Quite the opposite for the time actually, I would think.

Perhaps a grandchild... perhaps a child from a first marriage?

Hermy

Alicat wrote: »

... perhaps a child from a first marriage?

That would be my take on it.

Peregrinus

"Issue" means a descendant. "More remote" means more remote than a child. So "more remote issue" means a grandchild (or great-grandchild, great-great grandchild, etc, but in the context it's almost certainly a grandchild).

"Lawful" means legitimate, born to parents who are married to one another. In this context the antonym to "lawful child" would be "natural child".

If the deceased left one child from a first marriage, and six children from a second marriage, the grant of administration would simply note "seven lawful children". The fact that they have different mothers doesn't affect their rights with respect to the deceased and his estate, and so is irrelevant and need not be noted.

If the deceased left six children by his wife, and one child by another woman to whom he was never married, the grant would note "six lawful children and one natural child" because (back then) the natural child did have lesser inheritance rights.

pinkypinky

Great, thanks for the help, everyone.

pedroeibar1

An addendum to the post by Peregrinus
I think it would be fair to say that in 1919 illegitimate children had no rights and they continued to be regarded in England as bastards (filius nullius) for life until the 1926 Legitimacy Act allowed some of them to be legitimated by the subsequent marriage of the child's parents. That was quite regular as divorce was only for the rich and to avoid bigamous marriages a separated parent could marry only after the death of the first spouse, often long after the birth of the new family. In Ireland we had to wait until the Legitimacy Act, (1931) for similar and wait until 1987 for the Status of Children Act which abolished the concept of illegitimacy, thus making the inheritance rights of all children equal be they born within or outside wedlock.

Peregrinus

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

An addendum to the post by Peregrinus
I think it would be fair to say that in 1919 illegitimate children had no rights . . .

. . . with respect to their fathers. They had full inheritance rights with respect to their mothers (if their mothers had any property to leave, which frequently they did not).

Plus, of course, we're talking about what rights children had on intestacy/under the succession legislation. A man with non-marital children could make a will leaving his property to them, and in cases of the kind pedroeibar mentioned - long-term relationships where the parties cannot marry - that was (mostly) what was done.